Before you make any plan in marketing your product, the first thing you must do is conducting a marketing research. This is an important step to know how your future customers will respond to your product. Marketing research includes some aspects such as the market, customers, economical and political environments, and so on. Here you will find several tips to conduct a research in marketing.
• Know well what you are going to offer. Conduct a marketing research on customer’s buying decisions to know what they long to obtain from a certain kind of product. Knowing the advantages of product offered by competing company will give you a glimpse on what you should add to your product.
• Cost assessment must be a part of your marketing research. Know well the amount of money you must spend on any possible costs such as production costs, promotion costs, distribution costs, and adjustment costs. This will help determine the price you charge on your customers.
• Marketing research must also be done on the targeted customers. Know well for whom you make the product or service then clearly state them in your mind. Jot down the age, genders, economic status, and any other helpful information of your targeted market on a piece of paper. You may want to start a study based on this information and learn your customers in depth.
• Competitors are other aspects you must closely consider while you are carrying out your marketing research. Know what they are doing with their products; what kinds of additional services they give to customers. Is there any special promotion that boost up the sales? Does their product have special feature that keep the customers coming to buy?
• After all steps of marketing research are being done, evaluate the result of your finding. Exclude unnecessary responses or bad data you might find in it. Keep relevant data in your hand and start making a marketing research report. This report is required as an evident that you have done the study and now you come with an answer.
• While making a marketing research report, you must include all relevant details of your finding. You will not necessarily mention all of them while doing the presentation, though, but putting down the details will make your report looks more reliable.
Learning each element that may affect your business plan is a part of marketing research. From customers to market condition, from the product you are going to offer to product competitor, all of these factors must be learnt well before you start making any marketing plan.